35 Best Board Games for Kids of 2022

Kids as young as 2 can start playing games that involve simple matching, color and shape recognition, sorting and memory recall. For toddlers, stay away from games with small pieces that can be choking hazards, lots of reading and counting or complicated, multi-step rules. Preschoolers can then add in games that use fine motor coordination, get them practicing simple strategies and work more with numbers and words.

That depends on lots of factors: Is your family super competitive, or would you rather work together and try to solve something cooperatively? Do you like quick games you can easily play after the dinner table is cleared, or do you enjoy working on long, strategy-based games with lots of rules? Are you trying to incorporate family members from a wide range of ages into one game night? Chances are, the answers to these questions vary by the day, so it’s good to build up of library of games for different ages and attention spans so you can pull them out depending on what you’re in the mood for.

Before including our favorite picks in an article, the Good Housekeeping Institute does rigorous toy testing to ensure we’re recommending only the best. Many of our choices are winners of our yearly Best Toy Awards, where we test each item based on the following criteria:

✔️Safety: Our engineers and analysts make sure that each toy reaches all safety standards. They also assess things like pinch points and make sure toys won’t shatter into small pieces to pose a potential choking hazard.

✔️Ease of Use: We look at each toy to evaluate how simple it is to assemble, how well it’s constructed and how durable it is during play.

✔️Kid Approval: Aside from testing each toy for skill-building attributes, like how well it develops social-emotional skills, all our final decisions come from more than 100 children, ages 1 to 15, who assess the fun factor!

For decades, the Good Housekeeping Institute has provided expert reviews and advice on everything parents and children love, including STEM toys, educational toys, sensory toys, board games and outdoor toys.

Much of the toy testing for this article was overseen by Rachel Rothman, the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Chief Technologist & Director of Engineering, with the help of Marisa LaScala, Good Housekeeping‘s Senior Parenting and Relationships Editor. For more than 15 years, Rachel has put her training in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics to work by researching, testing and writing about parenting products. Plus, as a mom to three kids under 5, she has plenty of first-hand experience.

Marisa has contributed to Good Housekeeping‘s toy coverage since 2018. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter, who are very competitive at the game of Labyrinth.